


These wings that want the skies

by Feileacan



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Wings, Coming In Pants, Frottage, Getting Together, M/M, Transformation, Wing Grooming, Wing Kink, Wingfic, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-27 00:09:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15674061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feileacan/pseuds/Feileacan
Summary: The first time Nicke sees a mature pair of player wings in person—not pre-downs, not rookie wings, but a full wingspan—it's the April before the draft, and he's in a dressing room in Latvia, trying not to be star-struck by his own teammates.Or: The NHL gives you wings.





	These wings that want the skies

**Author's Note:**

> Me, after SCF: My god their everything is so beautiful I have gone from mildly shipping it to forever OTP, this moment is so beautiful I could write a million words about it.
> 
> Also me: I'm gonna write rookie get-together wingfic.

The first time Nicke sees a mature pair of player wings in person—not pre-downs, not rookie wings, but a full wingspan—it's the April before the draft, and he's in a dressing room in Latvia, trying not to be star-struck by his own teammates. 

They come off the ice after Nicke's first practice with Tre Kronor, and Kenny Jonsson is stripping his jersey off before they're halfway down the tunnel. He's out of his pads a few seconds later, twisting his spine and rolling his shoulders like he's loosening the muscles in his back. Between his shoulders, he has the full patch of soft down feathers and long scapulars that grow in with mature wings. Nicke doesn't mean to stare, but he can't help himself, especially after Kenny stretches his arms over his head and his wings unfurl. 

Nicke has never seen someone's wings come out. A second ago, he wouldn't have said there was anything there between Kenny's shoulders besides the down. He sees the curve of the wings first, bulging underneath the feathers, and then it's like they unfold from nowhere, nothingspace. Most of his feathers are a soft grey; Nicke remembers, at one point, finding a fanpage that kept track of the various bird species around the league. The Islanders wings look like pigeons, which he'd thought was kind of laughable until now. Seeing them in person, there's nothing laughable about the way the wings spread and flex, almost spanning the locker room. 

As soon as Kenny has them spread fully, the glint of gold catches Nicke's eye. It's the primary feathers, the big ones on the ends of the wings, that look like soft, new-minted gold. 

"Come on, fold it in." That's Henrik, shoving past Kenny's wingspan like he does this every day. He does, Nicke remembers, after Henrik pulls off his own pads and stretches his wingspan, too. His are bright red, not grey, and he has the gold primaries, too. 

"The gold is from the Olympics?" Nicke blurts out, and finds himself turning red as Henrik and Kenny both look at him. 

"If it's the primaries, it's the Olympics," Henrik says, treating it like a perfectly logical question to ask. He spreads his left wing out wide, and now Nicke can see more metallic feathers; the secondaries are banded silver-and-bronze. "If it's here, it's from Worlds." 

"And if it's _here_ ," Kenny adds, his fingers hovering just above the scapular feathers on Henrik's back, "it's the Cup." 

"The only place you ever want silver," Henrik says, grinning crookedly. He twitches away from Kenny's hand, like he doesn't want his feathers being touched. 

"Ready to add some gold to those secondaries?" One of Kenny's wings flicks out and brushes Henrik's, almost like a playful shove or an elbow. Nicke can't take his eyes off the way the feathers shift and move. 

They aren't the only two on the team with wings; there's Henrik's teammates from Detroit, and also Michael Nylander, whose wings are angular and blue-grey, with darker grey banding. Falcons, Nicke remembers. Red Wings are cardinals, Islanders are pigeons, and the Rangers are falcons. 

Nicke spends the tournament fascinated with their wings, staring every time they're brought out, asking what he feels like are a million questions. How did they learn to pull them in? What did they feel like when they first started getting pre-downs? Did it ever hurt to keep them stored away? 

"Ask whatever you like," Henrik says kindly, after Nicke mumbles some kind of apology for prying. "You're going to have a pair of these in a year or two, after all." 

Henrik's vote of confidence makes Nicke turn even redder. He hasn't even been drafted, yet. 

They grow new feathers, over the course of the tournament. Nicke heard that happened, that your wings reflected your heart, and Nicke knows everyone's heart is in playing for Sweden and bringing home the gold. The covert feathers, the ones just above the long primary and secondary flight feathers, grow in yellow with blue chevrons. It almost looks like the crowns on the front of their jerseys, striping along their wings. 

"You look terrible," Kenny laughs, when Henrik's start coming in. "Like a parrot. There's too many colors going on here." 

Henrik throws a sweaty towel at Kenny's face, but his expression is pulled into a wry smile. The yellow and blue does look garish against the Red Wings plumage, especially with all the metallic secondaries, the banded silver-and-bronze clashing even more. Nicke loves it, still, even with the riot of color. The wings are like their love of the game made manifest, and the feathers are for their teams. 

After the tournament, when his mouth tastes like champagne and heady victory and he can't stop smiling so hard his cheeks hurt, Nicke wonders if the gold medal around his neck means that his secondary feathers will come in gold from the very beginning. When the champagne showers start in the locker room, everyone's wings are already out, and everyone is too giddy to care about soggy feathers. That doesn't mean they don't all fluff up their feathers and shake their wings like a flock of sparrows in a birdbath, slinging the champagne everywhere again, an endless cycle. Someone puts the trophy to Nicke's lips and urges him to drink, and when he looks up, Michael is the one holding it. 

His wings are out, of course, damp with champagne and sticking up. Nicke's never been this close to the undersides of his wings before. Falcon wings are tan and brown banded on the underside, but from here Nicke can see that the feathers aren't uniform. Michael's yellow and blue coverts have only grown in on the backs of his wings. Underneath, there are some with thicker brown banding; others are stubbier, fluffier and tan; a few are dark brown; still another type is soft blue. Nicke reaches before he realizes what he's doing, his head already feeling fizzy with alcohol, but Michael catches his wrist. 

"Not those," he says, guiding Nicke's hand down. "If you want to touch, stick to the flight feathers." 

"Where are those from?" Nicke asks. In the absence of the full wing pattern, he can't identify them. 

"Sometimes, even after you've been traded, some of the feathers stay." Michael shrugs, an easy smile on his face. "For me it's every team I've ever played with in North America." 

Nicke wonders if his own wings will look like that one day, a secret stripe of multicolor on the undersides, souvenirs of everywhere he's given his heart. 

After winning a gold medal, the draft should feel easy, but it doesn't. He's nervous all week, jittery, feeling like he's going to burst out of his skin. He keeps trying to tell himself that everything is going to be fine, but he can't seem to convince himself. He can't sit still in his seat, his leg jittering as they call Erik Johnson to the Blues, Jordan Staal to the Penguins, and Jonathan Toews to the Blackhawks. He watches those guys go up on stage in front of him, million-watt smiles on their faces. None of them look like they're about to be sick. 

Then it's Washington's turn, and Nicke feels like he's going to swallow his tongue when he sees them bring Alexander Ovechkin up to the podium. From the audience, it's hard to tell, but as Ovechkin bites his lip and fiddles with the paper onstage, he looks almost as nervous as Nicke feels; bizarrely, that's more settling than it isn't. Ovechkin is _there_ , he's made it to the show, and he still looks like he's about to fall apart on that stage. The mic is set so low that Ovechkin has to bend almost in half to get close to it. 

"The Washington Capitals are happy to pick Nicklas Backstrom." 

For a moment, it feels like the only thing Nicke can hear is the sound of blood rushing in his ears. The next second, he realizes it's the crowd, and that his father is nudging him to walk up onstage. Later, he'll remember pulling the jersey over his head, shaking everyone's hand, standing next to Ovechkin as he has his first picture taken in Capitals colors. In the moment, he only feels like he's going to fly apart into a million pieces, overwhelmed and full of joy and unable to find the English to say any of it. 

He didn't want to jinx anything before the draft, but after he's back in Sweden, he spends hours at night after practice trying to find everything he can about the Capitals, especially Ovechkin. It's not what he expects. The press isn't kind, which Nicke supposes he should have expected, but the American press is a different shade of unkind than Nicke is used to. There's a lot Nicke misses in translation, even though he's better at reading and writing English than he is at speaking it, but he can see the undertone. Ovechkin is too flashy, too reckless, too selfish. Not a team player. Doesn't even have rookie wings, not committed to the NHL. 

It's the wings that bother Nicke the most. Everyone says that rookie wings should come in by the end of your first year, but Ovechkin has spent a year in the league and Nicke has seen the grainy pictures from the locker room. He doesn't even have pre-downs between his shoulders, the very first growth signs of wings. Nicke doesn't know what it means, for someone to play in the NHL and not grow wings. Every player does; even some of the other guys on Team Sweden had started getting the itch between their shoulders by the end of Worlds, the magic bleeds over that much. 

Nicke doesn't have time to wonder when the season starts. He throws himself into hockey, knowing the Capitals are watching from across the ocean. He's not thinking about the bare skin between Ovechkin's shoulders, barely caught in the background of a shot during a media scrum. He's only thinking about playing his game, better than he ever has. He's made it but he hasn't _made it_ , and part of him wonders what will happen if he plays terribly this year. They could call his agent and say, no, nevermind, we've decided not to bring Backstrom to North America after all. 

In April, he's at Worlds again, pulling on a yellow and blue jersey and playing for his country. Henrik and the rest of the Red Wings aren't there, that year—they're too busy playing for the Stanley Cup—but Kenny is back, all of his flight feathers gone gold between the medals at Torino and at last year's tournament. Nicke thinks the gold feathers would probably feel different than the rest, but he doesn't ask to touch. 

They don't medal in Moscow, but they do play against Russia in the tournament. Nicke is competing against his future teammate. He watches the way Ovechkin plays and thinks about what it'll be like to center a line with him on the wing. He remembers saying that during his interview at the draft, that maybe he could be a playmaker for Ovechkin. He sees those little moments on the ice during the tournament, small windows where Nicke could have floated a puck onto Alex's waiting stick. He sees that Alex likes to lurk, waiting for the opportune pass and the opportune shot. Nicke chews on his mouthguard as he sits on the bench, watching Ovechkin skate and trying to concentrate on winning for Sweden instead of what's coming next year, him and Ovechkin playing together in the NHL. 

They lose both games they play against Russia, although Nicke gets an assist in both. It sits like a knot in his chest, just below his sternum. He feels like he could have done more. The locker room is subdued, afterward, and then that's it, the last full year Nicke will spend in Sweden. He's going to North America to play with the man who just beat him to a medal. 

Nicke goes to the medal ceremony even though he doesn't really want to. NHL players always accept their medals bare-chested, with their wings out, the same way they do for the Cup. Nicke is startled to see Ovechkin among the players who stand shirtless. He has his wings out, but Nicke can barely see them. They're still rookie small, the wingtips barely brushing out past his shoulders when he spreads them. 

"When did Ovechkin get his wings in?" Nicke asks. Only a handful of his teammates are there, and only because they have later flights and don't have anything better to do. Alexander Steen is one of them; he plays for the Leafs, his wings Toronto blue. 

"Sometime during the season," he says. "It was a big thing. He won the Calder without anything at all, you know. Nobody's ever done that before." 

On the jumbotron, one of the cameras sweeps around the players on the podium, lingering across the line of folded wings. Team Canada is a riot of color, full wingspans ranging from the Bruins' glossy raven black, to the Stars' soft mockingbird grey, to the Penguins' goldfinch yellow and gold. Everyone has mature wings except for one player on the bronze medal podium. Ovechkin has rookie wings at the end of his second year playing in North America. Nicke has never heard of that before. Everyone says Sidney Crosby's wings were half-grown by the draft. 

"Why did it take him so long?" Nicke has never been more grateful to be in a country where nobody else speaks Swedish. Ovechkin, he's learned over the course of the tournament, is Russia's—and especially Moscow's—beloved darling. 

"Who knows? Nobody knows how the wings work. Some guys get traded and they don't grow their new plumage at all. Some guys stay with the same team their whole career and their feathers are falling out by the end of it." Steen shrugs. "Mine came in all at once last year, as soon as I got to training camp. It was a long week." 

Nicke thinks it's strange, that hockey players in North America have been growing wings for a hundred years and nobody has tried to explain more about the hows and whys. He doesn't ask anything else. He watches them hang a bronze medal on Ovechkin's bare chest and thinks about how next time they see each other, they'll be playing together. 

He goes to Washington for training camp. It's strange, the capital; the white marble monuments and civic buildings seem to stick up suddenly out of the rest of the city, like it's a patchwork, a mismatch, thrown together with little regard for visual coherence. Nicke takes it all in from the window of his cab, letting the voices on the radio wash over him. He can understand English better than he can speak it, though his skills in the language aren't horrible. He'll be able to understand the coaches, and his teammates. He hopes. It served him fine in development camp. 

"You play so good, at Worlds," Ovechkin tells him, the first time they actually get to talk to each other. They're at media day, and someone from PR has told him to relax. He doesn't feel very relaxed. Maybe that's why Ovechkin has sidled up to him, because Nicke bets he looks like a scared animal caught in a floodlight. He's shirtless, likely because Capitals PR wants the press to see him with his wings. They aren't rookie wings anymore, apparently having filled out over the summer. Nicke tries not to stare at them, and tries even more not to think about touching them. 

"You did too," Nicke says. Worlds was disappointing. He doesn't want to talk much about Worlds. 

"I'm ready, have you on my line. We win then." Ovechkin sounds so smugly confident, a little arrogant even. Nicke doesn't even know that the coach is going to put them on the same line. 

"I'm the center, so isn't it my line?" Nicke fires back, because he's not going to let this oversized, gap-toothed bear of a person boss him around. 

Ovechkin laughs at him, the sound of it breaking loud across the locker room, turning heads from the camera crew to the press to Sasha Semin, doggedly trying to stagger his way through his pre-season press in English. Nicke feels a cautious smile pulling at his mouth and gives into it. PR did tell him to relax, after all. 

That's when Ovechkin becomes Alex. Nicke still sees him through the lens of all that American media he read before he came to Washington, at first. It's only reinforced by the fact that Alex is stubborn, resistant to changes, loud, brash, and unafraid to voice his opinion. Especially when it comes to playing with Nicke. 

"Should put you with me," he says, stabbing listlessly at his dinner. They're at the Italian place he swears by, which Nicke thinks is pretty good but won't say out loud, because he's started to realize that once you agree with Alex about something he loves, he decides you're best friends. He's found himself dragged along in Alex's wake more than once in the past couple days during training camp. There's no question Nicke will stay up; he's the best prospect on the ice that isn't already on the roster, and every time he and Alex do line rushes together it's like magic. But they haven't been put on the same line for scrimmage, and the coach seems to want to keep playing Alex with Michael as his center. 

"Michael is used to the smaller ice," Nicke says. He twirls pasta around his fork and ignores the way Alex looks at him like Nicke has betrayed him personally by stating a fact. 

"Sasha, you tell him. He maybe believe you. You _better_ , Backy." 

"Not yet," Nicke says, glaring up at Sasha, daring him to enter the conversation in either direction. Nicke doesn't want to cause a problem. He doesn't want to get a reputation for being difficult to coach. He definitely doesn't want to demand ice time with Washington's Calder-winning rookie sensation. He doesn't have a complex or anything, he knows he went fourth overall, and for a good reason, but he's not that good yet. 

Sasha ignores both of them, stuffing a huge ravioli in his mouth, whole. He doesn't even look up. Alex says something to him in Russian, his tone demanding, and Sasha calmly flips him off while he chews. Nicke would never tell Alex this, because he's starting to understand that Alex's big heart just wraps around everyone equally, but right now, Sasha is his favorite. He doesn't try to make waves and push Nicke into the center of attention. He also doesn't call Nicke by that stupid nickname that Alex keeps trying to make happen. 

Michael shows up at the restaurant not five minutes later to pick Nicke up and take him home, ostensibly to save Alex the trip of driving back to Michael's place but in reality rescuing Nicke from the intensity of Alex's company. Nicke is glad that Michael didn't get here in time to listen to Alex insisting that Nicke is better. He still leaves reluctantly, feeling a little like a kid being herded off to bedtime. He doesn't think about the fact that for all that Alex irritated him five minutes ago, as they're in the car driving away, Nicke finds himself missing Alex's gap-toothed smile. 

Nicke is grateful that Michael is there, and that he offered to let Nicke stay with him. It helps with the adjustment, to be able to speak Swedish at home. He spends a lot of time in the basement, beating the Nylander boys at table tennis. They only get points on him when the exhaustion is pulling at him, and even then, he doesn't let them win. 

Nicke's schedule is grueling; even coming from the pros in Sweden it's more than he expected. He's always hungry, always tired, and his muscles are always aching. All of him hurts, so his back aching doesn't feel that much different. It's only after their last preseason game that he figures out what's happening. 

They win the game against the Hurricanes, and Nicke even gets to play some minutes on the power play with Alex. It's the first time he actually believes what Alex is saying, about how he and Nicke should be on the same line for good. It's like Nicke can always see Alex on the ice out of the corner of his eye, always knows where he is, always knows the right angle to pass the puck so it ends up on Alex's tape. They don't score, but he comes off the ice to the bench grinning and breathing hard, accepting Alex's too-hard pat on the top of his helmet with a huffed little laugh instead of his usual irritation. Alex is grinning, too, delighted, the gap in his teeth making him look even more boyish than usual. 

Nicke is a little startled to realize that he feels fond of that crooked, gap-toothed smile. 

When they finish the game, his back starts to ache as soon as he leaves the ice. The rest of him aches, too, so he hops on an exercise bike for cooldown. The ache in his legs dissipates, but his back gets worse _and_ starts to itch. He gives up on the bike and hits the showers, the skin between his shoulders itching, and he just can't get his arms twisted around to scratch it. He starts rubbing his back against the edge of the shower stall, trying for relief, and hears laughter start up all around him. 

The players with wings always showered separately from the team in Sweden. It isn't until Nicke is in the showers in an NHL locker room for the first time that he realizes why. He thought the champagne baths in Latvia had been bad, but the showers are a hazard, water flying everywhere, and not in little droplets, either. Sometimes Sasha and Alex will get into contests to see who can shake more water over the other. He sees Michael dodging through a cascade from one of those little fights now, coming over to his stall. 

"Let me see," Michael says, as Nicke tries to futilely scratch the itch on his back. Nicke turns, jumps when he feels Michael's palm on his skin, then yelps and spins back around at a sharp pinch. 

"What was that?" he demands, but he sees the feather in Michael's hand before all the words are out of his mouth. It's tiny, little more than the size of Michael's thumbnail, and fluffy grey. Nicke twists his arms up behind himself again, trying to feel, but it's just out of his reach. 

"Congratulations, rookie." Michael grins at him. "Looks like pre-down to me." 

Nicke sees it in the mirror when he comes out of the showers, turning to look at his back. There are little wispy feathers sticking out of his back, tiny little things that are barely a smudge of grey against his pale skin. Nicke feels his heart thump against his ribs. He'd been afraid all summer that they wouldn't come in. 

There are a lot of things nobody told him about growing wings, mainly that they _itch_. By the time they play their first regular season game, Nicke can barely keep from squirming in his pads every time he puts them on. He still only has pre-down, the feathers sticking out at wild angles from his skin. 

"Is better, later," Alex tries to reassure him, as Nicke makes his best attempt to scratch his back against the wall and kicks it in frustration when it doesn't help. "When less fuzzy." 

"How long until it's less fuzzy?" Nicke asked sourly, twisting. Michael has told him so many times that he's not supposed to scratch, especially not with anything that can damage the skin or pluck the new, delicate feathers. It's driving him insane. 

Alex shrugs. "Weeks? Months? Not sure. Already is different from mine." 

"What took yours so long?" Nicke asks, and immediately feels mortified that the question he's been trying not to ask for so long just slipped out of his mouth. 

"Don't know." Alex doesn't seem bothered by Nicke's slip, and Nicke lets himself breathe again. Alex is an obnoxious force of nature that doesn't ever seem to remember that he can't just tell people to do things and expect those things to happen, but he's Nicke's friend. Maybe his best friend, if he didn't so often feel like he was tagging along in Alex and Sasha's wake. With his blue eyes crinkled up by his grin, he adds, "Maybe was waiting for you." 

Nicke doesn't dignify that with a response, because it's too ridiculous to think about. Wings are for hockey, for your team. Nicke wasn't even playing in North America when Alex grew his wings. Alex laughs at him anyway, probably because Nicke's ears are red. He hates how easily he blushes. 

The only place the itch seems to go away is the ice. Nicke doesn't know if it's because he's distracted or because the ice carries the same kind of magic as the Cup, as the wings, and it all calls to each other and gets wound up in each other. He just knows he can play the game without feeling like he wants to claw his skin off. The shower helps, too, when he turns his back to it and lets the water pound against his skin. He stays under the water longer than he probably should, his hands braced on either side of the stall, head bowed, letting the pressure of the water soothe the maddening itch underneath his skin. 

He scores his first NHL goal in November. It's dirty, and he falls down before he even sees if the puck goes in, but it _does_ , and when he gets back up on his skates he feels like his face is going to crack with how hard he's smiling. He doesn't even make it out of the Senators' crease before everyone on the ice mobs him, smacking him on the helmet. Alex is waiting for him on the bench, to grab Nicke's shoulders and yell something unintelligible but gleeful in his face. Nicke plays through the rest of the game feeling like he's going to burst. 

Which turns out to be literal, since as soon as he staggers off the ice, he's hit with pain, doubling over and grabbing for whoever's in front of him. It's Greenie, who takes a look at his pale face and yells for a trainer, holding Nicke up even while he's clawing at his pads through his jersey. Nicke's back feels like it's on fire, like someone is squeezing his skin in a vice. 

"Get his pads off," Michael is saying above his head, and Nicke is more than happy to help with that operation. Someone hauls his jersey off, and he starts fumbling for the buckles on his pads, only to have his hands knocked away. Greenie is standing with Nicke's jersey in his hand, watching as Michael and Alex finally get him out of his gear. Alex's blue eyes are wide and concerned. Nicke wants to tell him not to worry, that he's sure he knows what this is, but it hurts so badly he can only grit his teeth and breathe. 

The trainer doesn't look nearly as worried as Alex does, when he makes Nicke turn around. 

"Yep, they're coming in alright." The trainer's gentle hands are cool on Nicke's feverishly hot skin, and he leans his head against the wall and closes his eyes, breathing like he has through every other injury. "That's it. Relax and let them come, stop trying to fight it. Let the pain happen and then it'll be done." 

Nicke does his best to listen, sweat rolling down his temples, his teeth digging into his lip. He feels like someone is pulling his skin apart, flaying him alive, and then there's a sharp, excruciating pinch before the pain eases, a relief like ripping off a scab. Nicke sags, and Alex is thankfully there to catch him before he falls over. 

"And that's done," the trainer says. "Michael can show you how to manage them, I'm sure. You'll have to be scratched until you can pull them in." 

Nicke comes back to himself at that, pushing off the wall and trying to crane his neck to look over his shoulder. Michael catches his arm and tugs him along. 

"Shower, Nicke. You can see in the mirror. We'll be lucky if someone didn't catch all that on camera." 

They're still in the tunnel, Nicke realizes belatedly. He goes along as Michael takes him, with Alex and Greenie trailing behind. He shakes off Michael's hand and goes to take his jersey and his gear from them. 

"Thank you," he says, trying not to feel self-conscious about nearly collapsing in the tunnel. 

"Don't worry about it," Greenie says. "The first time they come out is such a bitch, man. At least you've gotten it over with so early in the season. Not everyone can luck out and have them come in over bye week, eh?" 

Alex is grinning when Greenie jerks a thumb at him, giving an unrepentant little shrug. "Wings do what they want." 

"Yeah, yeah, and you're never going to say anything different. How about I tell Backy how much you whined about not getting them your first year? Might make him feel better." 

"You do, I get you back," Alex threatens, which might carry more weight if Alex wasn't terrible at pranking. He always giggles before the punchline, giving the whole thing away. 

Nicke ducks his head at the shouts of congratulations that accompany his entrance to the showers. He goes straight for the sinks to see his back in the mirror. 

Rookie wings are never impressive when they first come in, and his are no different. They're ugly, stubby, and covered in grey down feathers instead of the majestic eagle wings they'll develop into. They look like chicken wings. Nicke tries not to frown at his reflection, remembering how long it took Alex's to come in. The wings know your heart, he's seen that from Worlds. If he doesn't like them, maybe they'll stay ugly, stubby, and grey forever. 

Michael spends a few hours with him trying to teach him to put the wings away, but Nicke doesn't have much success the first night. It doesn't help that eleven-year-old William keeps sneaking down the basement stairs, trying to spy on them. 

"Go away!" Nicke shouts, the latest time he spots a blond head between the stair railings. "Your dad has wings, stare at his!" 

"I've _seen_ his!" Willie whines in protest, but he does run back up the stairs. 

Michael is trying not to smile when Nicke looks back at him. "He's just curious." 

"He's annoying," Nicke grumbles. "Why is it so hard to make them go inside my skin? That's where they're supposed to be while I play." 

"They're immature, and you're not experienced with them," Michael says. "You're having trouble even moving them at will right now. Practice the opening and closing motion. Use a mirror, it'll help you get used to the fact that they're part of your body, now." 

"They still itch," Nicke says, feeling sullen. "I thought they were supposed to stop itching." 

"The itching is new feather growth. All of your feathers are still growing in over the down, so it'll itch for a while." 

"Can't you...?" Nicke turns around, putting his back to Michael. Instead of scratching his wings, like Nicke is desperate for someone to do properly, he slaps the skin between Nicke's shoulders. The sting banishes the itch only for a second. 

"No, sorry. Don't let the kids touch, either." Michael gets up, ruffling Nicke's hair and smiling indulgently when Nicke combs his fingers through it to put it back into place. 

"Willie is too obsessed with me already, I'm not letting him touch my wings. And the others have sticky hands." 

"It's enough to put you off children for life," Michael agrees, solemn except for the barely contained smile and the laughter in his eyes. "Maybe I should have all the rookies stay with me, for birth control." 

Nicke snorts, and goes back to the mirror on the dresser they put down here for him. Camilla gave him a hand mirror so he could more easily see behind himself without having to twist. Michael leaves him to it with a pat on the shoulder. He's so absorbed in flexing first one wing, then the other, then both together, that he doesn't notice the small blond head of hair make a stealthy re-appearance at the top of the stairs. 

It takes him two games in the press box to finally figure out the mental trick to bringing his wings in. He's happy for it, because it seemed like every single guy on the team wanted to give him advice on how to speed up the progress, and also because the lumps of them looked ridiculous under his suit jacket and itched like hell. Not that the itching stops just because he has them under his skin instead of out; if anything, it's worse when they're put away. Nicke gets a postgame question about his new wings and stumbles over a response that boils down to the fact that they itch like crazy. He gets chirped for that one for a week. 

Alex is the only one who didn't try seven different ways to tell Nicke how to pull his wings in. He's also the one who lights up when Nicke comes back to the locker room to dress for the game. They might be doing terribly, losing and looking like a mess on the ice, but to Alex, all that seems to matter is that Nicke is there. 

Michael still won't touch Nicke's wings, not even to scratch. Willie keeps trying to touch them, which drives Nicke crazy. He flinches away from Willie's small fingers without even knowing why, just that he doesn't want his wings touched, at least not by the mini-Nylander. Little Alex is almost as bad as his brother, but at least he isn't tall enough to reach up and grab the way Willie is. Nicke doesn't stop asking for Michael to please just itch them _a little_ , but Michael always refuses. 

Nicke's wings go from ugly and grey to ugly and brown in a couple of weeks, not growing much but beginning to fledge, brown feathers replacing the grey fluff. They're not true flight feathers yet—the wings will have to get bigger, for that—but it's progress. Progress that still itches so bad Nicke stops in the tunnel to rub his back against the wall whenever they come off the ice. Through his pads and with his wings pulled inside his skin, it doesn't help much. Nicke is too afraid to rub the new, delicate wings against the corner of his stall the way he had with his pre-downs, so he suffers through the excruciating itching under his skin. 

Then Michael gets injured, and Nicke comes home from morning skate to him laying on the chaise with his head in Camilla's lap, his wings out and spread to their full span, the tips of them dragging on the floor. Camilla has her hands in them, stroking over the coverts and smoothing them back into place. Preening. It seems like an intimate moment, one that Nicke probably shouldn't have walked into. For once, the house is quiet. The older ones are usually in school this early in the day, but they must have had someone take the baby, because not even the usual faint sound of the baby monitor echoes through the house. 

"Nicke," Camilla says, seeing him in the doorway at last. Michael opens his eyes but doesn't move. Nicke can see from here that he has an ice pack strapped around his shoulder. "Did you need something?" 

"No," Nicke says quickly. "I'm just dropping off my gear." 

He doesn't know why he feels so out of place all of the sudden, awkward like he's intruding even though Camilla and Michael have never made him feel like an intruder. He still doesn't drive much, but he does have a car now, so it's easier for him to slip back out of the house, leaving them to the rare quiet and driving aimlessly around the city. 

He has to pull his wings in to drive, and the itch starts a few miles down the road. By the time he's circled Kettler with no real destination in mind, he's squirming in the driver's seat, trying to scratch his back on the seat through his shirt. It's making him insane. Before he thinks about what he's doing, he turns his car around and heads to Alex's place. 

They don't have a game that evening, but Alex never takes it easy in practice. Nicke stands on the doorstep with his fist raised to knock, wondering if Alex will be napping. His back itches so bad, though, that he ends up knocking anyway. 

"Backy!" Alex greets him cheerfully.  Nicke has given up on trying to get him to drop the nickname. It's stuck. He only looks a little sleep-rumpled, his shirt off and his wings out, ruffled as ever. His sweatpants have some kind of obnoxiously colorful design on them. Nicke thinks he sees sequins.  "Thought you went home." 

"I was bored," Nicke says, coming in when Alex steps back from the door and gestures him inside. "The kids are at school." 

"You say kids annoying," Alex says, definitely teasing by his tone of voice. "I tell Willie you miss him." 

"No," Nicke says, giving Alex his very best frosty-eyed glare. Alex only laughs at him, the asshole. "TV?" 

"Food?" Alex counters, though he does toss Nicke the remote. Their limited English means that their conversations are always like this, stilted and half gesturing instead of actual words. Nicke turns on the television and starts flipping through the channels. 

"Order something," he suggests, propping his feet up on Alex's coffee table. 

He leans back against the couch and immediately catches himself rubbing his back on it, making a face. He strips his shirt over his head and concentrates like Michael taught him to, picturing his wings unfolding from his back. The itch lessens a little, but not enough, and when Alex comes back from the kitchen with takeout menus, Nicke has progressed to trying to itch his wings on the arm of the couch. Alex makes a snorting sound that sounds distinctly like he's trying not to laugh. 

"They _itch_ ," Nicke says, and it comes out far whinier than he intended. "They itch _so bad_." 

"Gets better," Alex says, patting Nicke's bare shoulder encouragingly. 

"Michael won't help." Nicke is in full-blown pouting now, and he would be embarrassed except that he's seen Alex when he's frustrated, and it's not any more embarrassing than Nicke. "I asked." 

"You did?" Alex sounds startled, like asking Michael for help isn't normal, or isn't something Nicke is supposed to do. "What he say?" 

"Just no," Nicke says miserably, trying to contort his hand up. His fingers can just barely brush against the bottom edge of his puffy brown fledgling feathers. It's not enough pressure to actually help with the itch. "And not to let the kids touch." 

"No, they shouldn't," Alex agrees, very seriously. Nicke eyes him, convinced now that there's something about the wings that nobody is telling him. It's a good thing that Alex, he's found out through systematic locker room pranks, is terrible at keeping a secret. 

"Will you? Help?" Nicke flops facedown on the couch, stretching out his tiny, stubby wings as far as they'll go. He hears Alex take a sharp breath like a gasp and rolls onto his side to look up. 

He's never seen Alex blush before. He's seen his face get red from anger or frustration, but not from embarrassment. He wouldn't have thought Alex was capable of being embarrassed; he seems to live shamelessly, throwing himself into everything with the height of enthusiasm and not a single ounce of care for how anyone perceives him. 

"Is bad idea," he says warily, but it's the kind of _bad idea_ that Alex looks like he could be talked into, like being the distraction while Nicke gets Sasha in the face with a towel full of shaving cream, and not the kind of _bad idea_ that he immediately vetoes,  like saran wrapping all of Olaf's pads before practice. 

" _Why?_ " Nicke is back to whining, but Alex has proved pretty weak to his whining and he's not above using dirty tricks to get what he wants. "I can't reach!" 

Alex answers him in Russian. Nicke doesn't get frustrated when he does it, not like Greenie sometimes does, because he knows that when Alex is speaking Russian at him, it's because he just can't find the words in English. Nicke yells at him in Swedish sometimes, so he understands. 

"Will it hurt them?" Nicke demands, because if the reason nobody will touch his wings is because they might hurt them, he would get that. Even if he just saw Michael with Camilla's hands buried in his feathers. Maybe it's different when they're mature. 

"No, not hurt," Alex says. His own wings rustle and settle, a nervous gesture Nicke has seen him make before facing the media. Nicke likes to think he's not as bad as reporters who want to call Alex lazy, as if he doesn't work as hard as any of the rest of them. 

"Then why?" It's like they're hovering on the edge of discovering a big secret, right about to tip over. Nicke sits up, so he's not talking to Alex while sprawled out on his couch. "I'll do yours, if you show me." 

"I'm first," Alex says. He's turned a little redder, but his voice is determined now, like he's made a decision. "Show you. Then, your turn." 

Nicke thinks about arguing, because his wings are the ones that are making him crazy, but he's so close, he's not going to say anything that's going to make Alex change his mind. 

"Okay," he says. "What now?" 

Still red-faced, Alex jerks his head down the hallway. Nicke gets up from the couch and follows, hesitating when it becomes clear they're going back to Alex's bedroom. Alex doesn't wait for him, and he has to walk a little quicker to catch up. 

Alex flops onto the bed in a little cloud of down, laying on his back with his wings spread wide. The undersides are the same solid brown as the tops, all except for the secondary flight feathers, bronze from the medal he beat Nicke for. Nicke can't find it in him to be jealous, not when he has a gold. All of Alex's Team Russia feathers are long gone, molted over the summer and replaced by Capitals brown. 

"Start here," Alex says, flexing the tip of his wing. The huge primary feathers are as long as Nicke's forearm, and the tips of Alex's wings drag the ground. 

"Just a minute." Nicke almost laughs at the sudden, confused look on Alex's face just before turns and leaves the room. 

"Where you going?" Alex shouts at him from the bedroom. 

"I'm not sitting on the floor!" He shouts back, and grabs the closest chair to take with him. 

He settles it nearly against the wall, Alex's wingspan is that big. Alex lifts his wing up and sets it in Nicke's lap, and for a moment Nicke freezes. He's thought about this for nearly two years, what it would feel like to touch someone's—Alex's—feathers. They look so delicate up close, like his hands and their hockey calluses could leave them ragged and broken. The brush of feathers against his stomach tickles, the edge of one of Alex's large primaries pressed against his skin. Nicke's hands hover, unsure. 

"Like this." Alex folds the wing in, bringing the wingtip close enough so he can reach. He takes the feather in between two of his fingers and smooths the barbs, like putting velcro together. Then he spreads his wing back out, and Nicke has it in his lap again. 

He's hesitant with the first touch, still afraid to hurt. The feather is like stiffened silk between his fingers, somehow both delicate and strong at once. After the first one, he glances up at Alex, trying to make sure he's doing it right. Alex's gaze on him is intense, weighty, like there is more to this moment than just touching Alex's feathers. 

Nicke moves on to the next feather, the touch of his fingers a little surer now. Alex lets out a long breath, a sigh, the same noise Nicke has heard him make when he steps under the shower after a long practice, or slumps down onto the couch after demolishing half his weight in chicken parmesan. It's a satisfied sound. Nicke feels the half-grown feathers on his own wings prickle up at the same time as his arms breaking into goosebumps. Nicke has the feel of it now; he sweeps one side of the huge brown primaries between his first two fingers, then does the other. It's only when he finishes that he wishes he would have gone a little slower, taken a little more time to touch and enjoy the way they feel. 

Once he finishes smoothing the barbs of the primaries, Alex folds his wing in again and shows Nicke how to comb several of them between his fingers at once, straightening them out. Nicke goes slower this time, taking care to make sure they're overlapping the way Alex showed him. 

"Other side," he says, when Nicke is done and ready to move on to the secondaries. 

"Shouldn't I do them all?" Nicke is reluctant to let Alex's wing slip from his lap, but he gets up and moves the chair to the other side of the room anyway. 

"Other side next, then those," Alex says, pointing at his bronze secondaries. "Then I turn over." 

Nicke lets Alex direct him. They're his wings, after all. It's quiet, only the sound of their breathing and the soft rustle of feathers breaking the silence, except when Alex speaks up to give him another instruction. Alex's eyes get sleepier and less piercing the more Nicke works, like Nicke is putting him in a trance. He hums wordlessly when Nicke finally moves to the secondaries on his right wing. The metallic feathers are just as silky smooth as the plain brown ones. 

"I thought it would feel different," Nicke says. His voice is soft. He's reluctant to break the meditative quiet that's settled over the two of them. 

"Because bronze?" Alex shakes his head. From where he's laying on the bed, it's more like rolling it side to side. "Is all just feathers, all feel the same." 

Nicke has to get up out of the chair and sit on the bed to reach the last of the secondaries on Alex's right wing. He's acutely aware of the heat of Alex's body, the muscular line of his thigh pressed against Nicke through his sweatpants. Nicke's cheeks feel a little warm when he finally gets up, fetches the chair, and switches to the other side to start the process over. The obsessive itch of his own wings seems to have faded into the background now that he's focused on Alex's feathers under his hands. 

"It takes so long," he says, letting the bronze feathers slip through his fingers. 

"Can stop if you want, Backy," Alex murmurs. 

"I don't want." Nicke looks up at Alex's face. His eyes are closed. His mouth pulls up at the corner, and Nicke focuses back on his wing. Another few strokes of his fingers, and he finds a spot where two of the flight feathers seem to have grown almost on top of each other. One is loose, moving around in its bed. 

"Is ready to pull," Alex says, making a little yanking motion with his hand. 

"Will it hurt?" Nicke asks, closing his fingers firmly around the feather. It's more curiosity than concern; they punish their bodies so much that something like this shouldn't be a bother. And the wings are much less delicate than they first appeared. He still asks, because Alex looks like he's melting into the bed, and Nicke doesn't want to do anything that would wreck that for him. 

"Like little bruise, or pulling hair. Go, pull." 

Nicke does. The feather comes away in his hand with very little force, and Alex's wing barely shivers. In fact, he gives Nicke another contented sigh, like pulling the feather was a relief. 

"Itches, when is like that." 

"Not as bad as mine, I bet." 

Alex cracks his eyes open, a little sliver of blue between his eyelashes. "I do you, be patient." 

Nicke looks back down at Alex's wing, hoping it'll hide how flushed his cheeks are. Alex almost definitely didn't mean it that way. Nicke can't picture him having any patience for Greenie's half-stammered lessons on double entendre. Or maybe he does—he's been here longer than Nicke has. Long enough for Nicke to have watched him from across an ocean and wonder what it would be like to do exactly this, to let the shimmering bronze of Alex's secondary feathers slip through his fingers. Nicke still hasn't gotten his blush under control when he reaches the end of the secondaries, and avoids Alex's face when he sits up with a groan. 

"Okay, I'm move." He stretches, like he's actually been napping, his chest expanding as he takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. Nicke finds his eyes arrested by the way Alex moves, the way his muscles shift under his skin. For just a second, he looks up and Alex is looking at him. Their eyes break apart almost as soon as they meet, and Nicke doesn't know if Alex saw him staring or not. He turns over to lay on his stomach, and Nicke is faced with his broad shoulders, the slope of his back, the swell of his— 

"Now these," Alex's voice interrupts his thoughts. Nicke shakes himself out of it, swallowing around a dry throat. He jerks his gaze up to where Alex is pointing at the next layer of feathers, propped up on his elbows. He sinks back down into the bed, pulling a pillow into his arms. 

"What about the rest on the other side?" Nicke doesn't look at the way Alex's shoulders move when he shifts around, making himself comfortable. He doesn't. 

"Don't need it, I can reach those." Alex rustles his wings and spreads them wide again. "You'll have to sit on bed for this." 

He's right. Nicke can't reach the next set of feathers, the coverts, from his chair beside the bed. He scoots a little closer, careful not to sit on top of the secondary feathers he just preened, and trying not to press against Alex too much, either. 

"Same as the others?" he asks, his hands hovering over the tan-edged coverts, rounder and shorter than the flight feathers below them. 

"Same, just... gentle." Alex's face is turned to the side, propped on his arms, and his eyes are closed again. Nicke catches himself staring again at the way his muscles tense when Nicke's fingers slip into the warm, soft feathers. 

The tips of Nicke's fingers brush over the skin underneath the feathers, smooth and blood-warm. The first time he does it, Alex's wings shudder, the coverts prickling up like goosebumps, like Nicke's wings had, before Alex flattens them again. Nicke freezes, afraid he's done something wrong. 

"Does it hurt?" 

"No," Alex sighs, his wing pushing up into Nicke's hands. "Keep going." 

Nicke takes him at his word, working through the covert feathers the same way as he'd done the primaries and secondaries. There are more crooked feathers here, barely hanging on and ready to be shed. Nicke plucks them when he finds them, quick and firm, the same way a trainer would pop a finger back into place. 

The wings are bigger than he can reach from where he's sitting, pressed up against Alex's hip. Nicke hesitates, one hand buried in Alex's feathers, considering the problem. 

"I need to move." 

"Sit here," Alex says, wiggling around until he has one arm free, and pats his back just above his hips. Nicke swallows, his cheeks getting hotter. He knows that if Alex were looking at him right now, he'd see the flush on his skin. He feels out of his depth, like the first few times Alex pulled Nicke along with him when he went out to some noisy, crowded club in the city. He remembers Alex never left him alone, circling around him like a planet in orbit. Or maybe that was Nicke, for how Alex had slowly pulled him in by his gravity. 

He swings his leg over to straddle Alex's hips, shifting up on his knees until he's sitting on the small of Alex's back. He's careful not to let too much of his weight rest there; he's not a small person. Even though Alex is a little bigger than he is, he still needs to breathe. 

Nicke can reach the rest of the coverts like this, with one hand braced on the pillow beside Alex's head and the other combing through them. It's nothing like he's ever felt before. He thought, before he'd had a chance to touch, that the smaller feathers would be soft like fur, like petting a cat. They aren't. They're softer than the flight feathers, less rigid, but they still feel more like silk than fur. Nicke catches himself lingering, not moving on as quickly as he could. It's like he's zoning out to the feeling of Alex's feathers and the spread of his wing under Nicke's hand. 

Alex shifts on the bed. Nicke looks down at him and sees that the back of his neck is red, and so are the tips of his ears. He has his face turned down to the pillow, so Nicke can't see his expression, and his shoulders are tense again, like he's trying to keep himself still. Nicke draws his hands away, and Alex huffs almost like he's objecting as he switches to the other wing. 

It's on the tip of Nicke's tongue, to ask. He doesn't know what it feels like to have someone else's hands on his wings, but he's starting to understand what it feels like for Alex. He can feel Alex moving underneath him, the flex of his muscles between Nicke's thighs. When Nicke's hands plunge into the coverts of his other wing, Alex makes a bitten-off sound like a groan. 

Nicke knows he's blushing now, probably as red in the face as the back of Alex's neck is. He doesn't go any faster, though, making sure his fingertips rub against the warm skin between Alex's feathers. He could never have imagined, all those times he was dreaming about touching Alex's wings, that it would be like _this_. 

"Okay," he says softly, as he reaches the end of Alex's wing, his thumb stroking gently over the skin beneath the feathers. "This next?" 

He barely touches the down between Alex's shoulders when Alex makes a real sound, an actual moan, and his hips jerk against the bed. 

"Backy," he says, gasped out like he can't get enough air. 

"Nicke," he corrects, because he's not going to listen to Alex say that stupid nickname like _that_. Backy can be for the ice, if Alex wants it so badly. 

"Nicky," Alex says, and it's close enough. Alex twists until he's propped up on his elbow, his blue eyes hazy and half-open, his mouth swollen and red like he's been biting it. Nicke did that, with only his hands on Alex's wings. 

"Should I keep going?" Nicke asks. He's breathing almost as hard as Alex is, understanding now why Michael caught his hand, that one time Nicke tried to touch his coverts at Worlds. Why he kept insisting to Nicke that none of the kids should touch his wings. Why he refused to touch them himself. 

"You can stop." Alex sucks his lip back into his mouth and bites it. Nicke is blindsided by how much he wants to be the one biting Alex's lip instead. 

"Do you want me to?" 

The question stretches between them. Nicke still has his hand hovering just over the down, barely touching, and Alex shudders. 

"No," he says, barely a whisper. 

Nicke has never seen Alex hesitant about anything. He's seen Alex laugh when he's bloodied, when he's losing, when he's just picked himself up on the ice after a bad hit, grinning gap-toothed and fearless. He's seen Alex shake off bad press, fans yelling at him from behind the glass, and refs slapping him with shitty calls. This hesitation, now, the way Alex is looking at him like he's afraid to hear Nicke's answer, like he's afraid Nicke will _stop_ , makes Nicke feel more powerful than anything ever has in his life. More than having a gold medal put around his neck, more than pulling on a Capitals jersey, more than his first NHL goal, more than the first time the puck when from his stick to Alex's to the back of the net. 

He digs his hand into the soft, ticklish feathers between Alex's shoulders and presses his fingers down hard against the skin. 

Alex's mouth falls open, his eyes flutter shut, and his arm buckles. He flops back down against the pillows and makes a noise like he's been cracked open, his hips rolling against the bed. Nicke combs his fingers through the puffy down, lingering, making sure Alex feels every stroke of his hand. 

He reaches the scapulars, the feathers that will turn silver when he and Alex hoist the Cup together one day, and Alex shouts, hoarse and desperate. Nicke brings his other hand to bear, stroking down in the same motion, straightening the scapulars on the other side of Alex's spine. 

"Nicky, Nicky," he moans, his hips working in rhythm now. It's the only thing Nicke can understand out of his mouth; he's given up on English entirely, and Nicke sympathizes. Instead of words, he covets the noises, the harsh gasps and little 'ah' sounds Alex makes the longer Nicke's fingers comb through his feathers. Nicke lets his hands work over Alex's wings, digging deep into the down, shaking loose little bits of shed fluff. Alex's wings are spread and trembling, no longer limp against the bed. Nicke can feel the muscle flex and move under his fingertips and savors it, pressing as hard as he dares. Alex slurs out his name, half muffled by the pillow. 

Nicke carefully, carefully skims his fingernails under the warm skin beneath Alex's feathers. His wings flap once, the buffet of air sending shed feathers and down swirling around them. The noise Alex makes is too loud to be completely swallowed by the pillow, and he feels like he's shaking apart beneath Nicke, his sides heaving between Nicke's thighs. Nicke leans in, the down between Alex's shoulders soft against the bare skin of his chest. 

"Did I make you come?" He's surprised he can say it out loud. He wants that to be what just happened so badly. He's thought about it before, in little snatches he forced himself to ignore, because he knew what he could have and what he couldn't have. Alex was something he couldn't have. He'd just taken that as a given. But Alex is shuddering beneath him, the beat of his pulse rapid against Nicke's lips when he presses them to Alex's throat. 

Alex tries to sit up, but he can't with Nicke's weight blanketing him. He twists to the side instead, his crooked nose bumping against Nicke's cheek. Nicke turns. 

They're kissing. Alex's mouth is wet. His teeth bump against Nicke's lip, and Nicke can feel the gap of Alex's missing tooth against his skin. Alex fights to get an arm free from underneath the two of them so he can try to grab Nicke's face, keep him there to kiss Alex, messy and sideways. Alex's tongue pushes into this mouth, brushes against his lip. Nicke makes a noise this time, a little one in his throat. He'd wanted it too much to say or even breathe anything that might have broken the spell, before, but now is different. 

Now, Alex smacks at Nicke's hip until he finally gets up, carefully avoiding Alex's wings. Now, Alex sits up on his knees and Nicke's eyes go straight to the crotch of his sweatpants, wet with Alex's come. Now, Alex reaches for him and pulls him in close, and Nicke is aware of being desperately hard like a splash of hot water on his face, sudden and leaving him gasping. 

Alex pulls Nicke into his lap, one of his big hands sliding around Nicke's back to haul him closer. Nicke's jeans are a lot less forgiving than Alex's sweatpants, and Nicke starts to fumble with the button and the zipper. 

"Wait," Alex says, and doesn't look fazed at all by the purely venomous look Nicke gives him. Instead, the hand on Nicke's back slides higher. "Your turn now, Nicky." 

Nicke swallows. He thinks he should maybe brace himself, if having his wings touched is going to make him come in his pants, like it did for Alex. He grabs for Alex's shoulders just as his fingers reach the scrubby grey feathers and patchy little bits of down along Nicke's spine. 

It's like nothing he's ever felt before. His feathers feel like they're connected to all the most sensitive nerves on Nicke's body, plucking them all at the same time like a set of strings. Nicke's forehead goes to the crook of Alex's neck, his back hunched to push into Alex's hand. His stubby little wings are thrashing, and he'd be causing enough wind to knock everything in the room over if they were mature. It feels as intense as if Alex had a hand down his pants and was touching his cock, only Nicke's cock is still trapped behind the zipper of his jeans, neglected as Nicke clings to Alex. 

Alex barely skims his fingertips over one of Nicke's wings, stroking along the delicate, immature bone and stirring feathers in his wake. It's a burst of relief against the constant itch, especially when Alex digs in, combing through the messy overlapping growth of wispy grey and brand-new brown feathers. Nicke's mouth is open against the skin of Alex's neck, not kissing, but panting out groans that feel dragged up from all the way in his soul. Nicke doesn't even realize he's rolling his hips in Alex's lap until Alex's other hand tightens on his thigh, slowing his frantic, clumsy movements into something more satisfying. 

Alex switches to the other wing, and Nicke is so gone he's drooling on Alex's skin. He tries to fix it, sloppily licking at Alex's collarbone while he tries to rub off against Alex's abs through his jeans. His wings are quivering. The scrape of Alex's calluses against the tender, new skin underneath his feathers is ecstasy, a dizzying amount of pleasure. For the rest of his life, he only wants to play and win and do this with Alex. 

Alex's broad hand strokes over the feathers between Nicke's shoulders again. Nicke gasps for air. It feels like it's been punched out of him. His dick hurts, he wants to come so bad, but he knows he can come like this. He's so close he's shaking in Alex's lap. Alex is saying things to him, soft things in Nicke's ear, but he only hears the murmur of Alex's voice and the frantic pound of his own heartbeat. Alex pushes his fingertips deep into Nicke's feathers, following the hard bone of Nicke's shoulder blade. His fingers bump over a that makes Nicke jolt, the place his scapular feathers will eventually grow in. It makes his ears roar and his fingers tighten down on Alex's shoulders until he'll definitely leave bruises, makes him press his teeth against Alex's skin. 

It makes him come. Nicke shudders and pushes hard against Alex's stomach, his thighs tight around Alex's hips, riding it out while Alex lets his hand slide low, out of Nicke's feathers and down to Nicke's ass, grabbing a shameless handful that makes Nicke break into a giddy laugh. The wings don't let them fly, everyone knows that, but Nicke feels like he could, even with the stubby little things on his back right now. 

Alex lets Nicke stay curled up in his lap and panting for a minute, but eventually he starts to nudge him off. 

"Nicky," he says, nosing against Nicke's hair when all he does is cling tighter. "Nicky. Backy." 

"What?" Nicke doesn't want to move, probably forever. 

"You heavy." 

"You're heavier," Nicke says immediately, but he lets himself slide down out of Alex's lap and fall sideways onto the mattress. He rolls on his stomach, making an irritated noise at the sticky mess in his pants. That had seemed like a great idea a minute ago. Now it was just gross. 

Alex's fingers on his wing again are unexpected. The touch makes his feathers shiver, prickling like goosebumps again, and his dick stirs in his pants even though he's just come. Alex skims his thumb over the bottom edge of Nicke's wing, where the very beginning of flight feathers should be growing. 

Nicke stretches his limbs, wings included, and sits up. Alex's bed is covered in feathers. Half of it is down, swirling into the air every time they move, or shifting in the breeze from the air conditioning. There's the bronze secondary Nicke pulled, right at the edge of the comforter. Then there's a mess of grey down on top of Alex's brown, like Alex pulled whole handfuls of fluff off his wings while he was driving Nicke out of his mind. 

Alex's eyes are crinkled with his smile when Nicke finally looks at him, the gap in his teeth so endearing that Nicke leans over to kiss him again. He has only half a second to be afraid that maybe this was a one-time thing for Alex, because having someone's hands in his wings just feels that amazing. Alex kisses him back, though, and the anxious thump of his heart subsides. 

"So when they itch again, I come find you?" Nicke asks, his words against Alex's lips. 

"Every time, I do for you. Anytime. Every day after skate. Or before game. Or after game, too." He rests his forehead against Nicke's, the two of them breathing each other's air. 

"Maybe not every time," Nicke says, thinking of how much chirping he'd get if he came to every game with his face flushed bright red above his game day suit, his hair disheveled from Alex's hands. If every time he puts his wings out, the team can tell that someone else's hands have been touching them. 

They kiss until the drying come in their pants makes it uncomfortable to keep kissing. Nicke breaks first, slipping out of Alex's hold and stripping off his jeans and underwear, leaving them in a pile while he goes for the bathroom. Alex, because he's Alex, pulls off his sweatpants, turns them inside out, and wipes himself down with a clean spot. Nicke, because he's not a savage, at least washes his dick off with water. 

He looks at Alex from the doorway, at the way his wings lay glossy and smooth against his back. They never look so neat, like they've been tamed and flattened down for someone else. Nicke misses the feel of them under his hands already. He comes back to the bed, sliding his hands first over Alex's thighs and ass, because he didn't get to touch, but he ignores the tempting wiggle Alex gives him and ruffles his hands over Alex's wings. He doesn't do much, just casually brushes his palm over the coverts and the flight feathers, stirring them up a little. When Alex settles his feathers back down, craning his neck to look, they aren't quite as scruffy as he usually keeps them, but they aren't camera-neat, either. 

"Now you have to do again?" Alex asks, his smile sly and inviting, but Nicke only huffs at him. 

"You like them like this. Me too, I think. Neat isn't like you." 

Alex's face goes soft, his smile broadening and crinkling his eyes again, that same silly, happy grin that makes Nicke want to kiss him forever. He brushes his fingers through Alex's bronze flight feathers one more time, silk under his hands, and does. 

He goes back home too late, when the kids will be in bed, and has to sneak to his room. He had almost forgotten about the reason he went to Alex's in the first place, the maddening itch beneath his skin. It's gone now, relieved by Alex's touch. 

In the locker room the next day, while everyone is sitting shirtless in their stalls, wings out as they always are, Nicke gets a whistle when he lets his own unfold from beneath his skin. It's Alex, grinning at him with a dancing light in his eyes like a secret. 

"You have gold feathers," he says. When Nicke twists to try and look at his own back, Alex flicks one of the small, new flight feathers that must have come in overnight. Nicke tries not to shiver. 

"I have a gold medal," Nicke answers, reaching out to flick playfully at Alex's bronze. "You still need one of those, looks like." 

Alex rocks back like Nicke has wounded him, a look of comical shock on his face as he turns to Sasha for support, but Sasha is laughing too hard in his stall to be of any help. Greenie starts a slow clap just to be obnoxious, and Nicke gives him an overly-sweet smile, a declaration of revenge that Greenie definitely recognizes by now. He falters even though it's too late, and the rest of the room has picked it up. 

Everything is normal, except that Alex smiles at him a little longer, and as they finally start standing up to pull in their wings and strap on their pads, Alex lets his fingertips skim over Nicke's down feathers. 

"I have magic touch," he says quietly, when all the attention is elsewhere. "I do again, you have big wings so fast." 

"More for you to touch," Nicke says, just as quietly. 

Nicke can't kiss Alex here in the locker room, but his soft, gap-toothed smile makes Nicke want to more than anything. He reaches out instead, brushings his fingers lightly over the coverts on the underside of Alex's wings. He hasn't touched there yet. He makes sure to hold Alex's eyes when he does it, makes it into a promise. 

Alex shivers. 

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't able to fit every single piece of worldbuilding I've thought up for this verse into this story because it was going to bog it down with a bunch of unnecessary information, but I definitely have a list of what bird every team in the league has as wings and I also have a thousand other thoughts about how molting works after trades and what someone's feathers might look like if they feel like they don't fit on their team, etc etc.
> 
> EDIT: Enough people asked that I wrote up a primer on my DW. [Here's a link!](https://farasha.dreamwidth.org/132618.html)


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